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"Betfair will bring capital investment, as well as technology, marketing and communication skills."
And that, in a nutshell, is just what Timeform need.
An interesting development. Be interesting to see how the marriage develops after the honeymoon. I’d imagine that some of the personnel within an organisation which envisages ‘continuing on a day-to-day basis as it has done for nearly sixty years, with no significant changes to its products and services.’  against a backdrop of being acquired by the movers and shakers at Betfair are in for a challenging time ahead.
However, a generally positive move for both parties one would suspect and, hopefully, for us ‘consumers’ also.<br>
Quote: from cormack15 on 3:37 pm on Nov. 30, 2006[br]"Betfair will bring capital investment, as well as technology, marketing and communication skills."
…which would be wisely aimed at a further revamp of the only recently revamped Computer Timeform:
Firstly because the current version is very memory hungry, hence painfully slow even with what is surely a more than adequate 768mb of RAM and a 2000+ processor, with the result that I continue to use the old version which thankfully has not been withdrawn yet.
Secondly because the new version racecard and form database interface is not remotely as user friendly as the old one
Thirdly because they missed a golden opportunity by not introducing a racecard/ratings export-to-spreadsheet facility akin to Raceform Interactive;
Fourthly because they still don’t allow the Analyser function to interrogate the racecard ratings post-race due to them being date-deleted from the database, hence no historical record can be built concerning such as the performance of the top-rated and ‘p’ horses.
Content 10/10; presentation 2/10
I was able to get hold of the daily ratings for a period of about 3 months last year and concluded they did not compare well to the best commercially available ratings. My own private ratings outperfomed Timeform during the period also.
Timeform persist with basing a horse rating on the best career performance (or within last 6 months) rather than produce a rating based on the conditions for the race being assessed. The basis of their collateral form line method of handicapping is so outdated and easily beaten.
Quote: from Wallace on 6:04 pm on Nov. 30, 2006[br]
Timeform persist with basing a horse rating on the best career performance (or within last 6 months) rather than produce a rating based on the conditions for the race being assessed.
Personally all I want and need from a third party, from a ratings point of view, are unadjusted ‘base’ ratings and a historical database of same deduced by handicappers whose opinions I respect, though invariably try/like to question. To which I append my own observations/methods/filters to arrive at adjusted ‘ratings’ (in a loose sense).
Commercial adjusted ratings hold no interest as they remove – to a lesser or greater extent – the intellectual challenge of unravelling a race; that challenge being the prime reason I bother with punting in the first place.
Wallace, that is not much of an answer. Most of what you say is misinformation by cartload. I smell an agenda…
If your ratings (and I presume you compile ratings for every race) perform better than Timeform I will first subscribe here and now, and then secondly I will eat my fedora.
Bosra, I have no agenda with this. Timeform is an outdated organisation and their ratings were the best years ago but not any more.
I do rate every race and yes my ratings do outperform Timeform. You cannot subscribe to my ratings but you can subscribe to at least one other service that also easily beats Timeform. You’ll have to pay up to £25 per day for a ratings service used by a number of big hitters and most of the big bookmaking firms. <br>
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